About hating TOD in the 80s this review by Alan Dean Foster in Starlog is a perfect example.
"An effort like Temple of Doom is in trouble even before the title appears on the screen. Not only is it a sequel to a hugely successful predecessor, but Steven Spielberg and George Lucas hace placed themselves in the unenviable position of having to top themselves every time out (...) The audience expects Temple of Doom to do the impossible. It does not, and because the expectations for the picture are so high, all of its lapses and failures are magnified. Instead of being rated against itself or other films of the same ilk, viewers find themselves comparing it not only to Raiders of the Lost Ark, but to E.T. and Star Wars. This does not obscure the fact that Romancing the Stone is a better film of the same type. (...) What the audience will not accept is someone stepping out of an airplane with only an inflated rubber life raft to cushion his fall of several thousand feet (...) What the falling-out-of-the-plane bit does is shout to the audience "You must accept this because it's only a movie". That's fatal to a fantasy. The audience feels cheated, doubly so when the impossible plunge is repeated seconds later as the raft careens over a precipice. By ignoring the laws of reality, the illusion of reality that the film aspires to its destroyed. The dream has been punctured. It's popcorn time.
Toward the end of the film, Indiana and his friends are being chased through a mine tunnel labyrinth. Both pursued and pursuers race along a breakneck speed in runaway mine cars. So far so exciting. And then we're smacked in the face with another "Awwwww, come onnnn!". A section of track is missing and there is a gap and drop before they resume. The decidedly unaerodynamic mine car carrying Indy and his friends rockets off the broken rails, lears the gap, and lands with a precision no space shuttle crew could achieve on the rails opposite, to continue its journey. You can't selle this stuff to kids, much less to adults. They've been educated to the perils of speed: by Tv cops shows, by Driver's Ed in school, by Disneyland. Everyone in the audience knows such a feat is impossible. (...) It's the writers who must bear the blame for the story's lapses of logic. As Indiana is fleeing gangsters in Shanghai, he escapes to a waiting plane. How does the airport agent know Indiana has 2 companions coming with him? For that matter , since the gangsters own the plane and have already planned to maroon Indiana aboard it, why they chase him all over the city and risk getting shot? (...)
Another difference, and an important one to the audience, between Raiders and Temple of Doom is the absence in the second film of fantasy elements. About all we're given is the sequence showing Ram removing the heart of his still-living victim, an effect done better and more frequently in David Cronenberg's Videodrome. Temple of Doom boasts no swirling evil spirits, no blasts of supernatural fire, no boiling clouds. Again the trouble is with expectations. We expect the out-of-ordinary from Spielberg and Lucas. (...) I also thought better use could have been made of the Sri Lanka locations.(...)
Story, story, story, and it's not only the pacing that suffers in Temple Of Doom. Why is Mola Ram sacrificing people? Nothing in Temple Of Doom is ever explained. It's an idiot plot, where characters do things solely for the benefit of the film, not because it bears any relationship to the story. In Raiders we know why everybody's after the Ark of the Covenant, we know what the Nazis want, we see relationships developing between REAL people. There are no real people in Temple of Doom; only ciphers. Characters must have motivation. It's not enough for Mola Ram to act evil: he has to have a reason to be evil. Mola Ram is coming from nowhere and going noplace. Cipher. (...)
And that, in the last analysis, is why you leave the theater feeling uncomfortable at the conclusion of Temple of Doom. You know you've watched a well-made, lavishly produced film that seems to have delivered all it promised. It just doesn't sit right, and the reason why is simple. No magic".
STARLOG Nov 1984.
A lot of the criticism is similar to KOTCS:
inflated rubber life raft - refrigerator
the raft careens over a precipice - 3 waterfalls
mine car rockets off the broken rails and lands with precision - Marion driving to the precipice
better use could have been made of the Sri Lanka locations - only filmed in US
absence of fantasy elements - extraterrestial instead of biblical powers
Mola Ram is coming from nowhere and going noplace - Spalko
No magic - No tension
I love TOD and KOTCS. And, of course ROTLA and LC. Great saga with the same style and direction from Spielberg.
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